Executive Summary

Our society had always had a hard time accepting Africans Americans as a dignified being. They were thought of less than human and therefore, were looked down on. This horror dates back to the time when Africans were first bought to America as slaves and until this day they have faced many horrors and unjust situations. Being a woman has its advantages and disadvantages. But being an African American woman, life was nothing but full of obstacles.

For this paper I focused on some of the issues faced by African American women on the name of Eugenics, forced sterilization, birth control pill, and the idea of population control. My thesis fir this paper reads, Medical Experimentation, though a global horror, experienced by various ethnic groups and their governments (Nazi-Germany/Holocaust); African American women have had a particularly torrid and consistent relationship with government sanctioned and university approved medical experimentation such as: compulsory sterilization, birth control, and population control.

Through my paper I also explored the fact that it might seem like all these issues and inhumane treatment to the African American is are issues of the past, but in reality they still exist. They are many organizations that are still doing what they did back then. They are just operating under different names, names that are politically correct. I used many renowned and peer reviewed sources to support my thesis and I am hoping that one day we can all as a nation put an end to such issued and all sort of discrimination against man kind.

Final Paper

The United States claims to be the world leader in science and medicine. But there’s a dark side to their western science and medicine. There are only few who want to acknowledge the horrifying medical experiments performed on impoverished black women in the name of eugenics and scientific progress. Eugenics was a very popular social movement, which claimed to be a method of improving and preserving the desired groups in the population. Eugenics originally emerged from Darwin’s theory of evolution, which stated, “species that become successful and dominant are those best suited to survival in the environment in which they are living” (Rothman 7).

Supporters of Eugenics took Darwin’s theory to an extreme level and used the theme “survival of the fittest” to abandon who were “unfit”. Eugenics was practiced all over the world and was also promoted by governments and influential people of the time. Eugenics reached its peak in United States in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Eugenics in the U.S. was a way to reduce or even eliminate black population because they were believed to be the unfit of the society. Eugenics existed in the U.S. in many different forms such as: genetic screening, birth control, promoting differential birth rates, marriage restrictions, segregation, compulsory sterilization, forced abortions and forced pregnancies. It is necessary to understand the theory of Eugenics and its history in order to make sense of medical experimentation and how it started to target particularly black females. Medical Experimentation, though a global horror, experienced by various ethnic groups and their governments (Nazi-Germany/Holocaust); African American women have had a particularly torrid and consistent relationship with government sanctioned and university approved medical experimentation such as: compulsory sterilization, birth control, and population control.

Compulsory Sterilization was a government policy; According to which, people must go under surgical sterilization. This was to prevent the reproduction and multiplication of members of the population that were considered to be carriers of defective genes and African American women were thought to be the carrier of these diseases. Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? is a documentary series directed by Adelman, L. and produced by California Newsreel in 2008. Chapter 2: When the Bough Breaks in this documentary focuses on the phenomenon that African American women are most likely to give birth to premature or low birth weight babies than white women regardless of their education and income levels. According to the documentary, that this can be due to racial inequalities African American women face on daily basis and how this chronic stress can affect their children. United States was the first country to impose compulsory sterilization. It was adopted by 32 states under the eugenics program. Michigan was the first state to introduce this program in 1897 but the bill wasn’t passed. Later in 1907, the bill was passed and Indiana became the first state to adapt compulsory sterilization. This program was officially formed to target the mentally ill and the mentally retarded, but it also targeted black women in many states. According to a 1921 article, in the Birth Control Review, the author Sanger wrote, “The most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective”. But this was not the end, soon this brutal program came to it’s extreme and started targeting black females who had more than two or three children and were the recipient of welfare or food stamp or in most cases were simply black.

According to activist Angela Davis, 1 out of 4 black women were sterilized without their consent, and this was done while they were in the hospital for other reasons such as childbirth or a simple physical exam. Many females had no idea that they had been sterilized until 8 or 10 years later when they tried to reproduce. Most of these women were sterilized while they were only 10 or 12 years old and their mothers didn’t know how to read or write and were tricked by physicians (pbs.org).

Many poor black women were also threaten by the officials that if they didn’t agree to be sterilized, their benefits (food stamp, welfare and etc.…) will be terminated. Therefore, these women had no choice but to be sterilized. . Elaine Riddick is a 56-year-old black woman, who was sterilized when she was 14, in Winfall, NC in 1967. She was raped by a neighbor, which resulted in her pregnancy. She was involuntary sterilized after giving birth. The officials in North Carolina had forced her illiterate grand mother to sign the consent by saying to her that if she didn’t sign the consent, her welfare will be cutoff (uid.edu).

“America has always viewed unregulated Black reproduction as dangerous. For three centuries, Black mothers have been thought to pass down to their offspring the traits that marked them as inferior to any white person. Along with this biological impairment, it is believed that Black mothers transfer a deviant lifestyle to their children that dooms each succeeding generation to a life of poverty, delinquency, and despair. A persistent objective of American social policy has been to monitor and restrain this corrupting tendency of Black motherhood” (Roberts 1997:8). This clearly states that compulsory sterilization was turned into a racial conspiracy to hold back blacks and to eliminate them.

People’s opinion towards eugenics and compulsory sterilization rapidly started changing after WWII mainly because of what happened in Germany with the Nazi’s and genocide. But this horrific act openly continued until 1970s. According to a study, 3,400 Native American women were sterilized in just four towns between 1973 and 1976. 20,000 black women were sterilized in California from 1959 to 1964, 8,300 women in Virginia and 7,600 in North Carolina between 1961 and 1969 (uic.edu). Although the horrific acts such as forced sterilization is not openly practiced anymore but the mentality of our nation is still the same. According to New York Times, on June 20^th in 2012, the state of North Carolina refused to compensate Elaine Riddick and labeled her as “feebleminded” and potentially promiscuous.

African American women were always perceived as over sexual. Over the many decades they have been victims of many degraotypes such as: Mammy and Jezebel (Covert, 2013). While Eugenics was becoming less and less popular in the United States Specially after WWII, when Hitler took Eugenics to another level a popular term we now known as “birth control” was being introduced. Birth control is a method used to control pregnancy. Contraceptive pill, which was a very popular method of birth control, was approved in the United States in 1960. For women across the country, the pill was liberating, it allowed them to pursue careers and lead to more open attitudes towards sex. But for African American women, it was a conspiracy that was introduced to hold them back by reducing them in numbers. The number of contraceptive clinics rose from 34 in 1930 to 803 in 1942 and most of these clinics were located in states heavily populated by African Americans. An article in Ebony Magazine in 1968 stated that Douglas Stewart, Director of the National Office of Community Relations of Planned Parenthood said that, “Many Negro women have told our workers, there are two kinds of pills – one for white women and one for us and the one for us causes permanent sterilization. These kind of shady practices were very common among African American women. This clearly shows that these women were deceived on the name of medical science.

The Pill is a documentary film directed by Gazit, C, & Steward, D and published by the Steward/Gazit Productions, Inc. in 2008. This documentary film talks about how the contraceptive pill was invented in the 60s. This film also focuses on how the pill was uses against African American women with out their consent. It was being prescribed to them by their doctors as Aspirin or other mild painkillers. These women had no idea that by making a simple doctor visit will change their entire lives. They no longer will be able to have children they always wanted.

Now let’s divert our attention to another popular term known as population control. Population control was a term that was introduced around the same era as the birth control pill. It was introduced to keep the growing population of America under control. But in reality it was a government conspiracy used to keep only African Americans population under control. White Americans were having as many children as they wished for; it was the Blacks who were being prevented from having children. And the government had many excuses such as: the number of incarcerated blacks and the black mothers were not capable of raising children and etc. The fact that they thought that Blacks women were not capable of raising children really throws me off because as well all know and also evidenced from Washington’s book Black females had always been the primary care taker or care provider to white children and this is also true in present times. If Black women are not good enough to raise children than why all the white folks let them raise their children and why the degraotype such as Mammy was born? There were many horrible things that were done to keep Black women from having children. When the government realized that the Blacks women are not so naïve anymore they have an idea of what is going on and what is being done to them behind closed doors, they stop trusting these white doctors. When the government realized that they came up with other things such as offering cash rewards to women who used a permanent method of birth control or who simply agreed to have their womb taken out (Washington 194).

Many abortion clinics were also opened up around the same time. And most 90% of these abortion clinics were in poor Black neighborhoods. The mothers were being counseled or brain washed to abort their child because these doctor’s were putting things such as: they no longer will be able to smoke or drink, they no longer will be able to continue with their crack and they won’t be able to financially sport the baby, in their heads (Washington 212). And this was not the only thing they did they were also paying the mother to have the abortion. They also went as far as threatening them to have an abortion or their welfare will be cutoff.

Barbara Harris, who is the founder of Children Requiring A Caring Kommunity said in 1990 “We don’t allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children…” her statement clearly shows how Black women are looked as, no better than dogs and we don’t want them to have children/puppies. This is a very disturbing statement to me not only being a woman, but simply being a human. Since when did we start to define humanity in the name of color? CRACK is an organization that pays Black drug addicts to give up their fertility permanently and in returns they offer them rewards in cash form. And unfortunately 60% of their clients are Blacks. This organization advertises “ Don’t Let Pregnancy Ruin Your Drug Habit”(projectprevention 2013).

Now what is this statement telling us. Are they promoting drug use or are they promoting abortion?

Finally, we all might think that this is 2013 and slavery and unjust governmental actions such as forced sterilization, birth control pill or the idea of population control is long gone and is an issue of the past. Unfortunately, we are wrong, all these things still exist in our nation they just have different names and politically correct way of practicing what they wish for. CRACK, which is now known as Project Prevention is a great example of something that is politically correct but still wrong. African American women have had a rough time from the slavery era to up until now. They have looked upon as if they were less than human. How and why do we refer to our self as a free nation when we have been and still are taking someone’s fertility rights away? Who are we to decide whether or not a Black women id capable of raising her own child.

Even today, birth control conspiracy theories still affect the use of birth control by black men and women. According to a study reported in The Journal of Health Education and Behavior (2007), more than one-third of participants of a telephone survey said that hospitals and institutions are using poor Black women as guinea pigs to try out new birth control methods and not only that but they are also making them sign a consent form which sets them free if something bad was to happen to these women. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier in my paper Eugenics still exist in our country just under different names and methods and the majority target of these inhumane practices are African American women. Now, what should we call this? A conspiracy or a coincidence.

Saba Tanvir

Bibliography

 

Adelman, L. (2008). Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? California Newsreel.

Gazit, C, & Steward, D. (2008). The Pill. United States: Steward/Gazit Productions, Inc. American Experience.

Washington, H. A. (2006). Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical          Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. New    York: Harlem Moon.

Severson, K. (2012, June 20). Payments for Victims of Eugenics Are Shelved. The New    York Times. Retrieve from Web on Nov 25, 2013.

Project Prevention (2004-2011). www.projectprevention.org. Retrieve from Web on Dec 7, 2013.

Chesler, Phyllis.”Worldwide Trends in Honor Killings.” Middle East          Quarterly(2010),Vol 17, Issue 2: 3-11. EBSCOhost. Web. 20 Nov 2013.